


Captor

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, only the vaguest flavor of the ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22501072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "So, I saw this glorious art of a humanized Bunnymund, and remembering that Pookas are actually shapeshifters, decided to do my normal googlefu and found something interesting on Wikipedia, of all places:'According to legend, the púca is a deft shapeshifter, capable of assuming a variety of terrifying or pleasing forms, and may appear as a horse, rabbit, goat, goblin, or dog. No matter what shape the púca takes, its fur is almost always dark. It most commonly takes the form of a sleek black horse with a flowing mane and luminescent golden eyes.'Sounds an awful lot like the description of a Fearling, to me.And then if you pair that with this feel-wrenching gifset and commentary. Well, we all knew I love long, convoluted prompts…SO!To figure out what Pitch’s new evil plan is, Bunnymund shifts into a fearling-looking horse and runs with them for a while...[cut for length]"Obviously, with the typical length of my fills, I couldn’t do the whole story as outlined in the prompt.So. Bunny’s captured by Pitch and forced to stay in a human form. Pitch thinks this will help him in some way. Bunny starts to hope he’s right, because the other option isn’t good at all.
Relationships: E. Aster Bunnymund/Pitch Black
Kudos: 12
Collections: Dark Chocolate Short Fics





	Captor

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 9/18/2013.
> 
> Here's the rest of the prompt: "Pitch finds Bunnymund out, and forces him (somehow) to shift into a Human form and stay that way, while Pitch has his wicked way with him makes him stay around and basically just keept Bunnymund captive (with whatever Author wants that to entail)
> 
> Bunnymund is not down with this so much. 
> 
> But as he’s dealing with being a prisoner and stuck with PItch, he starts to see the pieces of Pitch that are cracking, and broken and breaking. And Bunny is starting to realize that there is a ‘child’ here that needs his help. Pitch. So, Bunnymund tries to use his powers and slowly give Pitch hope again, who gets gradually less insane, and eventually they develop feelings? 'Course, Pitch is afraid of what will happen if Bunnymund isn’t 'human’ anymore (because being human restricts/limits his powers or somesuch thing) and Bunny has to convince him that it doesn’t matter what shape he’s in, he isn’t going to take Pitch’s hope away again.
> 
> I’m not so sure how to tl;dr all that, actually… Eheh.
> 
> Anyways, please? It could just be friendship or romantic, maybe there is a Guardian Jack (but really, IDK who) that Bunny is already in a relationship with that is trying to find him that complicates things."

You develop sympathy for your captor, or you die. Bunny’s heard that before, and he’s seen it more times than he’d like to remember. He never thought he’d be in a situation that axiom could be applied to. And if he had, he would have thought who was prisoner and who was captive would have been a little clearer.  
  
Now, as he reclines against the wall of his cell—though it isn’t much of a cell, not really, just a large, bare, alcove in one of the rock walls of the caverns that forms Pitch’s realm—and Pitch watches him from outside the bars, he finds himself asking once again, _who is the prisoner here?_  
  
The place Pitch watches him from is nearly identical to his cell. Rough, dry, stone, maybe carved and maybe not. Too old to tell.  
  
 _Too old to tell what?_ Bunny wonders. If the stones are too old to tell something, then surely he and Pitch are too old to tell anything to anyone.   
  
Bunny flexes his fingers and catches the slightest movement of Pitch’s eyes. He’s not surprised. Every day for the past—well, he’s not sure. Days tend to slip by for him, even in the Warren. So short, they might as well be Planck units. So many, he forgets what he called them before any of Planck’s ancestors could even be called human.  
  
For…many…days, then, Pitch has come to his cell and watched him for hours. Watched him and said nothing, while Bunny doesn’t watch him, and also says nothing, moving as little as necessary. When Pitch captured him he forced him into a human-shaped body, and he’s not used to it. It makes him clumsy.  
  
He hadn’t known Pitch could do that and make it stick.  
  
It should be clear enough from that alone that he’s the prisoner, but Pitch, Pitch doesn’t usually keep things. He prefers to lash out, to destroy rather than hoard. But he’s been keeping Bunny. So maybe there’s something about this situation that makes the Boogeyman a prisoner too.  
  
Today, Bunny thinks he might as well try to find out.   
  
Maybe he can also find out why he feels hope from Pitch whenever he arrives outside the cell and sees Bunny still there.  
  
“Didn’t know you had that much against rabbits, Pitch,” he says, stretching out his legs.  
  
It’s hard to say how long the silence that follows lasts.  
  
“I needed to limit your power,” Pitch says finally. “I couldn’t have you breaking out of your cell the moment my back was turned.”  
  
Bunny shrugs. It’s true his powers are altered in this form, but that’s only because no child thinks of humans as travelling through raw earthen tunnels with the tap of a foot. His center still remains intact, and, if he had to guess, he thinks he might be even harder to kill while human-shaped.  
  
“It does limit your power, doesn’t it?” Pitch’s voice is suddenly tense.  
  
“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Bunny turns to look at Pitch. He can see his jaw muscles working, imagines he can hear his teeth grinding against each other. “Why? I don’t think looking human limits your powers, otherwise you’d never walk around looking like you do.”  
  
“Of course looking human limits my powers,” Pitch snaps.  
  
Bunny narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Thought you always wanted more power.”  
  
“That was when I was younger.” Pitch begins to pace, and as he moves through the vague, slanting light, Bunny realizes that saying he looks human isn’t as accurate as it has been. He’s far too tall and thin and colorless, and the way he walks doesn’t seem to fully match up with how Bunny knows human knees and ankles work. “Old as I am now—think, Bunny. You have changed much, and you have always had others around you to define you. And even so! Would the Pooka recognize the Easter Bunny as one of their own?”  
  
He has no idea. His memory is only _his_ memory. “Wish I could ask them,” he snarls.  
  
“I have been so rarely seen,” Pitch muses, ignoring Bunny’s comment. “I have changed far more, perhaps, than any of you could imagine.”  
  
Bunny remembers the moment when Pitch forced him into this human form. He had thought it was an effect of their confusing battle in the dark, but Pitch had looked…somehow blurred around the edges, as he wielded that power. And there had been something behind him as well, something vast and dark and not-quite-present. Something that looked like a billions-of-years-old embodiment of fear ought to look, maybe.  
  
“I think I’d like to stop changing,” Pitch says, almost to himself. “I think you and the other Guardians might appreciate it as well.”  
  
“We might,” says Bunny, his nonchalance hiding the chill that’s settled in his spine.  
  
“Good.” Pitch clasps his hands and Bunny thinks he sees his fingers pass through each other before Pitch remembers himself. “I’ll be keeping you here then. You were a shapeshifter, I have made you a non-shapeshifter. I shall be observing you until I find out how exactly this was effected.”  
  
“Good luck,” Bunny mutters. They’ll all need it.   
  
You develop sympathy for your captor, or you die. Bunny’s not sure how that’s going to work now. Now that it seems that neither he nor Pitch, as he’s fought and spoken with, has the captor role.  
  
He’ll figure it out. He hopes he will, anyway. And Pitch does too.  
  
Anything to avoid what at this instant seems all too likely: You develop sympathy for your captor, and you die. Along with everyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> Tags from Tumblr:
> 
> #writing characters with geological lifetimes is kind of freaky


End file.
